Hi,
I am looking for fashion designers for our private label clothing line, I am not sure as to how to negotiate the payment terms with the designers, shall I pay them hourly or project wise or we should work in revenue sharing model. Also, what if we have an inventory which doesn’t sell after the designer designed the clothing line. And ideally how many pieces shall we design to start with, I want a lean model and not huge inventory as we have recently started our operations.

A designer will have their own terms. I know for t-shirt design most designers will charge by the project, but you should discuss it with the designer.

Don’t offer a revenue sharing model. That’s always a red flag for designers that you don’t want to pay for the work up front and they won’t be compensated. It might work for designers starting out but anyone that is good won’t work with you. One exception is if you are a big company like threadless, you can do something like this because designers know they will be paid.

And the big fear is having too much inventory that doesn’t sell. This could mean that it missed its mark and consumers don’t want to buy, or it could just mean that you haven’t advertised and marked enough to get the right people to see it. Its hard to know for sure… is the price to high, not a good design, just needs marketing and advertising.